AUTHOR ARCHIVES

Brittany Ballenstedt

Brittany Ballenstedt writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, which delves into the issues facing employees who work in the federal information technology sector. Before joining Nextgov, Brittany covered federal pay and benefits issues as a staff correspondent for Government Executive and served as an associate editor for National Journal's Technology Daily. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Mansfield University and originally hails from Pennsylvania. She currently lives near Travis Air Force Base, Calif., where her husband is stationed.

June 19, 2008
As the nation gears up for the first presidential transition in eight years, architects of a major personnel transformation at the Defense Department are working to ensure their efforts to link pay to performance sustain the reforms and gain the support of leaders in the new administration. Congress created the...

June 17, 2008
A House panel late Monday gave its approval to a bill that would give civilian federal employees a 2009 pay raise of 3.9 percent, a figure equal to the adjustment already authorized by the House for military service members. The House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee approved the...

June 13, 2008
Rejecting a White House proposal, a House subcommittee this week approved additional funding for enhanced retirement benefits for Customs and Border Protection officers. The House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, taking up the fiscal 2009 Homeland Security appropriations bill, voted to grant $217 million to continue a law enforcement officer benefits...

June 11, 2008
The government should do more to assure individuals with criminal records that they are not barred from certain types of federal employment, lawmakers said on Tuesday. At a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, members of Congress said hiring ex-offenders could help many...

June 6, 2008
The leader of a federal labor union called on Congress on Wednesday to investigate whether new pay and personnel policies at the Transportation Security Administration have contributed to rising attrition rates at the agency. Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, pointed to a May report by...

June 5, 2008
Federal employees are now one step closer to being able to perform their jobs from home, or from a satellite office closer to home, a few days each month. The House approved legislation (H.R. 4106) on Tuesday that would require agencies to develop a program to allow employees to telework...

June 3, 2008
Federal agencies would be able to launch pilot projects testing alternate methods for processing equal employment opportunity complaints under a draft regulation the agency issued on Monday. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted unanimously at a June 2 meeting to revise how federal employee complaints are processed. The draft rule...

June 2, 2008
Small and common stocks, two of the riskier fund options in the Thrift Savings Plan, led earnings in May, while fixed-income bonds lost ground. The S Fund, which invests in the stocks of small- and mid-size U.S. companies, grew the most of the five funds, at 4.88 percent last month....

May 30, 2008
Office of Personnel Management officials said on Friday that they told a contractor to stop working on a portion of a new electronic retirement system for federal employees because of a "lack of satisfactory performance" in creating, developing and maintaining an electronic retirement calculator. Ronald Flom, OPM's senior procurement executive,...

May 29, 2008
FROM NEXTGOV
The Office of Personnel Management has suspended a portion of a 10-year, $290 million contract awarded to Hewitt Associates to create a new electronic retirement system. Comment on this article in The Forum.OPM decided late Wednesday to suspend part of a contract with Hewitt, a human resources consulting company based...